Who Does Competitive Intelligence on Your Team? The Video
In short
Whoever defines the sources determines what you see. This step comes before all others. Competitive Intelligence is a process with four steps: plan, collect, analyze, share. Each step needs a name, or it gets left undone.
What the video is about
Who does Competitive Intelligence on your team? When everyone is responsible, no one is. The video breaks the job down into four steps: plan, collect, analyze, share. Each step needs a name, or it gets left undone. One In the video, for example, that is the marketing lead, an assistant, product management and the sales lead; on a small team, marketing and sales each take two steps. name per step is enough, and that way even a small team covers the whole process.
Research sees CI as a process too. Pellissier and Nenzhelele conclude in their study that most researchers define CI as a process: planning, collecting, analyzing and passing the results on to decision-makers (Towards a universal definition of competitive intelligence, South African Journal of Information Management, 2013).
The key message
Source-First starts with planning. Before anything is collected, someone decides whose publications you follow: which competitors, which associations, which other sources. Whoever defines the sources determines what you see. That is why this step comes before all others.
There is a limit to this: a source list only covers who is on it. A topic search, on the other hand, is quick to set up when a question about a topic comes up.
What you get out of it
- You know who on the team owns which step.
- You define your sources before anything is collected.
- Nothing gets left undone because no one feels responsible.
A tool can help with collecting: Picasi brings together what the sources you defined publish, in one place. Who on your team plans, analyzes and shares is still up to you.
More on how Source-First and Competitive Intelligence relate: Source-First Intelligence vs. Competitive Intelligence